Australia Day – 26 January 2026
On 8 November last year, a small group of men stood outside the New South Wales Parliament dressed in black, their faces covered, their banners carrying the symbols and slogans of Nazism. I was in Rome at the time, but the shock of the incident stayed with me for many weeks. It was shocking not because hatred is new, but because of the sheer brazenness of the incident. Shocking because our society had emerged as a place where the unthinkable had now become possible.
The events of 14 December 2025, and the subsequent legislative reform of only last week, have now made such a public protest more difficult. But legislation alone does not change hearts. The National Socialist Network may have disbanded but its action late last year exposed a toxic current within the social landscape, and that current unless addressed will only find new and more complex outlets.
This Australia Day perhaps more than any other invites us, then, to ask not only what we celebrate, but who we are becoming. The decision to establish a Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion arises from that same moment of reckoning. It acknowledges that hatred does not appear suddenly; it grows when fear is left unchallenged, when difference is turned into threat, and when stories about ‘us’ and ‘them’ are allowed to harden. Antisemitism, like all forms of racism, is never an isolated prejudice. It is a warning sign of a deeper fracture in the moral fabric of a society. To tolerate antisemitism, of course, is not only to fail our neighbours—it is to forget our own story. But the challenge before us is wider still. The same fears that fuel antisemitism are often redirected toward migrants, refugees, and those who arrive speaking different languages or carrying unfamiliar customs. Immigration becomes a convenient scapegoat, blamed for economic anxiety, housing stress, or cultural unease. Yet this, too, is a distortion.
In recent years, Australia’s birthrate has fallen to historically low levels. The total fertility rate — the average number of children a woman is likely to have — now sits well below the replacement level of about 2.1 children per woman, with recent data showing figures around 1.48 births per woman. This decline reflects deep cultural, economic, and social shifts: young families delaying parenthood in the face of housing and cost-of-living pressures, changing norms around family formation, and the complex interplay of work, education, and personal profession. At the same time, we cannot ignore the immorality of abortion in our nation. While Australia does not compile comprehensive national statistics on terminations, estimates suggest that tens of thousands of pregnancies each year end in abortion – a figure that can only deeply disturb us.
Amid these demographic realities, some voices in the public square are urging a narrowing of our immigration programs, reducing immigration only to a mechanism to ‘fill the gap’ left by fewer births. But such arguments risk reducing human beings to demographic placeholders. People are not a commodity to be traded; each migrant, like every child in the womb, bears the dignity of the human person created in the image of God. The Church calls us to resist simplistic solutions that treat life and community as statistics to be balanced. Rather than casting newcomers as a burden or scapegoat, we are invited to see migrants and refugees as part of the rich tapestry of God’s creation — neighbours to be welcomed, friends to be made, sisters and brothers with their own stories of risk, hope, and resilience.
The Kingdom of God calls us beyond fear toward a generosity of heart that refuses to treat people — whether they are unborn children, struggling families, or newly arrived migrants — as burdens to be weighed or barriers to be overcome. Our task is to build a society where life is cherished, where families are supported, where diversity is embraced, and where every person can flourish in dignity. This is not only good policy — it is witness to the Gospel and a foretaste of the Kingdom of God, where love casts out fear, and every human life is held sacred.
Australia is not a nation weakened by diversity; it is a nation made resilient by it. From the world’s oldest continuing cultures, to waves of settlers and migrants, to those who have arrived in recent decades seeking safety, opportunity, or belonging—our national story has never been singular. Multiculturalism is not a modern experiment imposed from outside; it is the lived reality of who we are. And therefore, multiculturalism cannot be reduced to a problem to be managed; it is a living sign that the Body of Christ transcends every tribal, ethnic, and linguistic boundary. In the early Church, believers from “every nation under heaven” gathered at Pentecost — not to erase their differences, but to celebrate them in unity under the Spirit’s breath. At Pentecost, the Spirit does not erase difference; instead, each hears the good news in their own language. The Book of Revelation imagines the final gathering not as a single culture triumphant, but as a multitude “from every nation, tribe, people and language.” Diversity is not an obstacle to God’s reign—it is its sign.
When we resist attacks on immigration, when we stand against antisemitism and racism, and when we celebrate the multiculturalism that is our national identity, we bear witness to the Gospel. We are declaring that fear does not have the final word, that dignity is not conditional, and that belonging is not something to be earned.
Australia Day, then, is not simply about pride in the past. It is about responsibility in the present. The question before us is whether we will allow the loud voices of fear to define the public square, or whether we will quietly, persistently, and courageously choose another way.
May we be a people who refuse the narrowing of compassion, who resist the temptation to divide, and who recognise in the face of the stranger not a threat, but a neighbour. And may our life together, in all its diversity, become a living sign of that Kingdom where justice and mercy meet, and where all find a place at the table.
